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Mad Forest

Churchill's play about the Romanian revolution explores he reactions of ordinary people to confused events by focusing on two families. What emerges is the dreadful damage done to people's lives by repression and the painful difficulties of lasting change.

The play was written after Churchill, the director and a group of students from London's Central School of Speech and Drama went to Romania to work with acting students there. It was first performed in 1990, only three months after their return.

Author

Caryl Churchill (born 3 September 1938) is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, the abuses of power, and sexual politics. She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and a leading female writer. Her early work developed Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of ‘Epic theatre’ to explore issues around gender and sexuality.

From
A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of dance-theatre, incorporating techniques developed from the performance tradition initiated by Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fabel dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and surrealistic narratives characterises her work as a postmodernist.